I admire Crystal Palace fans. They make a hell of a noise, they clearly love supporting their club and are thoroughly enjoying their team's fantastic success in recent seasons – and why not?

They've known tough times – they nearly dropped into League One a few years ago and they've flirted with going bust a couple of times. I remember interviewing the Grim Reaper on a march with Palace fans back in the 1990s. Thankfully it wasn't the real one.

I also admire those supporters for making a persistent stand against greed in the game. Yet again this month that vociferous and sometimes semi-naked corner of Selhurst Park – the 'Holmesdale Fanatics', the self-proclaimed 'Ultras' – held up a banner which read: 'If you saw the game through our eyes, all tickets would be subsidised. Twenty's Plenty.'

Palace signed Yohan Cabaye from Paris Saint-Germain in a £12.8million mega-deal in the summer

Alan Pardew brought the man who starred in his Newcastle midfield to London

'Twenty's Plenty' is the Football Supporters' Federation campaign to cap away tickets across all levels at £20 (£15 concessions). They don't just display evocative, well-worded banners. They take action on behalf of fans, they speak to movers and shakers in football, working hard for real action to be taken so that fans can benefit.

These genuine fans of football deserve a medal.

But how well do those right and proper views sit with the fact that Crystal Palace as a club has now made the plunge and signed up to join in with the greed and gargantuan salaries of the Barclays Premier League?

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The bold decision taken by the board on the advice of manager Alan Pardew this summer, to approve the signing of brilliant midfielder Yohan Cabaye on huge wages, was a massive shift towards closing the gap, even just a tiny bit, on the top-flight giants.

Everything the impressive Steve Parish and his board have done since they rescued the club five years ago has been positive. If fans can't trust this board then who can they trust?

But the truth is Palace's revenues aren't huge, their matchday income is one of the lowest in the Premier League, and since the £15million departure of Wilfried Zaha in January 2013 to Manchester United they haven't made significant income from player sales.

The main threat to Palace's stability would be relegation and right now that looks unlikely. But as much as Pardew is impressing everyone, he nearly took Newcastle down in 2012-13 (with Cabaye in the team), when a run to the quarter-finals of the Europa League left them struggling for breath in the Premier League, losing their final three home games of the season with no goals scored and 10 conceded.

Cabaye is clearly a class act, and celebrated scoring for France against Armenia in a friendly last week

The cultured midfielder takes on Denmark's William Jordensen in another friendly on Sunday evening

The main problem was a mid-season run of 12 defeats in the two months between mid-November and mid-January. Pardew has a record of being a patchy manager – he can be brilliant, he can be mediocre. Right now times are good.

But with Parish in charge I don't fear for Palace's future. What will be interesting is how the Cabaye deal affects the club in the mid-to-long term.

I can't help thinking Pardew has been a little bit naive here. He comes from a background of arriving late to the professional game as a player and for that reason money was never his priority. He probably earned more on building sites and fitting windows than he did in his early days as a pro. He loved the game, he loved playing.

In management he has had to work his way up. Promotion with Reading and a near miss with West Ham in the FA Cup final in 2006 somehow left him patrolling the lower reaches of League One and he had every right to feel unrewarded for his good work. He got a break at Newcastle, and has finally found safety, security and love back where it all started – Crystal Palace.

Everything Steve Parish and his board have done since they rescued Crystal Palace has been positive

What will be interesting is how the ground-breaking Cabaye deal affects Crystal Palace in the mid-to-long term

It's a nice story that has left Pardew with some sweet and romantic notions about the modern game. At £12.8m, the transfer fee for Cabaye is great value, but still a club record. At £80,000 a week, in Pardew's own words, it knocks everything 'out of kilter'.

That's not part of the traditional wage structure at Selhurst Park. Pardew explained recently why he felt he needed to persuade the board to buy Cabaye.

He said: 'There's no player that can knock on my door and say "I want the same money as Cabaye". If you increase the wage structure because someone has come in and they don't deliver then you have a problem. But they can all come and knock on my door and ask for more money, saying, "I want Yohan's money" and they'll get a simple answer: "You're not as good as him".'

It might seem logical on the face of it. But what if Palace create history (and revenue) with a historic FA Cup win for example, but Cabaye is rested for the early rounds and injured for their later rounds?

What if Jason Puncheon or Yannick Bolasie, who have already served the club so well in getting them to the Premier League and keeping them there, score and/or create the goals that seal a top-four finish at some point? Are they not worth as much? It's more likely to be Scott Dann making a vital tackle in a crucial game than Cabaye, isn't it?

What if Jason Puncheon or Yannick Bolasie (pictured) score vital goals? Are they not worth Cabaye's money?

Pardew has been a patchy manager at times, and he almost got relegated at Newcastle - along with Cabaye

Sometimes having the biggest impact at a club is more important than being the most technically gifted. Unilaterally declaring Cabaye as the best player at Palace and therefore having the right to earn more than double what most of the others are on is a dangerous path for Pardew to choose.

Footballers in my experience love money like anyone else, and agents have made the 'parity clause' an actual reality. Before Cabaye's arrival no Palace player would have thought such a clause even worth thinking about.

It's just not Palace of course, but now they've entered that place, and agents will be seeking meetings I'm sure. If Pardew thinks they'll all quietly accept it when he turns them away by saying Cabaye is a better player then that's naive.

The 'Twenty's Plenty' campaign won't help pay Cabaye's wages I'm afraid. And those fans' campaigns at Palace and elsewhere are about fairness, and doing what's right and proper and decent, acknowledging that there is a soul of football that needs to be nourished and cherished.

Newcastle fans hold up a banner asking for Pardew to leave the club after results took at turn for the worse

While Cabaye's bank account balloons, club captain Mile Jedinak almost left for Stoke in the window and can't get a start at Palace these days. His late goal in the final game of the 2012-13 season cemented Palace's play-off place and subsequent path to the riches of the Premier League.

The Aussie is being disposed of, while Cabaye, obviously a better player, is brought in and treated like a God.

It's not fair. But then that sums up the modern game. Would the Holmesdale Fanatics agree to selling Cabaye in order to half the price of away tickets at Selhurst? You can clearly see how Palace fans protesting about crazy ticket prices doesn't sit right while they strip off their shirts and cheer on a player on £80,000 a week.

It makes me reluctantly wonder whether fans' campaigns are all futile in such a greedy self-serving football world.